saphixation

Well yeah, and presumably it would be an automated system. But I like to imagine a one or two interns manning the phones at 2-3am as they suddenly start ringing off the hook...

He said "accepted via phone". Can you imagine the chaos if nsf released results over the phone??

Possibly even less - Fastlane went down an hour earlier than it has in previous years!

Nvm - that sucks, I'm sorry :-(

It says you need a student id, which is listed in your acceptance letter, in order to rsvp - that definitely seems promising. Of course, they could just be sending out the email to everyone, so it's hard to say for sure.... hopefully it's a good sign, though! Good luck!!!

Well, that does seem promising, then! Honestly, if I were you, I'd call or email them and find out what the deal is.

It's possible that this is an indication you've been accepted, but unlikely. Admittedly I received an invitation to an open house for accepted students at my top choice university before actually being told I was accepted, but the invite also told me to expect good news soon (I got my acceptance letter and financial aid offer a week later, right after I got home from the open house). Since your email didn't say anything like that, I think it's unlikely that it means anything more than what it says at face value. I will also add that NYU poly was one of the schools that emailed me constantly after I took the gre (I didn't apply there), including with invitations to various events, so it's possible the email you got is similar. It's still possible you'll be accepted, though! I got two acceptances very late in the season.

What does the rest of the email say?

I remember this time last year, I was incredibly anxious about hearing the GRFP results. This year has been much different; a week ago, my boyfriend and I adopted two adorable seven month old kitties, and they've kept me so distracted that I've barely even thought about the results coming out soon. It's great! Plus, their habit of waking me up every night at 4am when they start chasing each other around the apartment like maniacs guarantees I'll be awake to see the results the moment they're posted. I think it's the perfect system. So to any future applicants wondering how to cope with result season stress: adopt cats!

I love that movie! I feel like I've seen it a billion times from all the classes where I've had to watch it. May I ask how you connected it to the rest of your essay?

A couple of my professors specifically ask to be informed of all results, the reason being that knowing what types of students got accepted or rejected at various schools can help them give better advice to future students. They asked me to inform them where I did/did not get accepted when I was applying for REUs, too, for the same reason.

I think you raise a good point, but at the same time, it depends on your particular brand of "outdoorsy". There's plenty of outdoor activities to do, even in winter: skiing, snowboarding, sledding, snowshoeing, ice skating, hockey, dog sledding, ice fishing... Obviously these might not be particularly appealing to someone who isn't used to snow and cold, but they're definitely still options.

B and C haven't even accepted you yet, let alone started pushing you to make a decision. From what I can see of your situation, there's no point in rushing A except due to your own impatience. I get that waiting to hear back from your top choice is tough, but at this stage you need to just wait and see. Given that A has told you roughly when to hear from then, you should at least wait until then. Asking any earlier makes you look impatient and like you can't follow directions. If you haven't heard by mid-March or so, then you can consider asking if they've finished sending out invites yet.

I use thanks or thank you. I've never really considered it being my signature's job to make me memorable. "Till Niagra falls" is kind of cute, but mostly just seems gimmicky. If you really think that your signature is so important, it's probably better to stick with something safe so you don't risk putting someone off.

Is this for Temple? I'm not in your field, but when I applied there, I had the same thing on my application. It never changed throughout the application process (even after being accepted), so I don't think it really serves a purpose, or at least not one that we as applicants can see. I wouldn't worry about it.

I don't even know where to begin explaining how stupid that is.

I think you misinterpreted what RubyBright said. I believe their point was that it is unlikely that Lewin (or basically anyone here) is looking at doing a job during a PhD because they aren't invested enough in their research. Rather, the vast majority of people take up jobs because, despite receiving a stipend, money can be tight during grad school. In other words, the two of you are in agreement.

Delaware requires a 4.0 minimum AW score on the GRE. I'm guessing the reason you were rejected so quickly is because you didn't meet that minimum, and I suspect even if you reapplied without funding, you'd just get cut again for the same reason.

So, the formula to find a combination is n choose k, or n! / (k! * (n - k)!) where n is the number of things to choose from (in this case, that's the number of staff members, so it's unknown) and k is the size of the group (in this case, k is 5). Knowing that, and knowing we need at least 20 groups, we can say: n! / (5! * (n - 5)!) >= 20 It's possible to simplify this, but to be honest I would just start plugging in for n. We want to find the minimum n, so put in the smallest possible n first, which is 7. Now we have: 7! / (5! * (7-5)!) >= 20 which simplifies to 7! / (5! * 2!) >= 20 (7 * 6) / 2! >= 20 21 >= 20 This is true, so we know that 7 is the answer. Hopefully this makes sense - I'm happy to try and explain more if needed! Also, sorry about the formatting; gradcafe is not the best place to write math equations.

Yep, as iowaguy says, there isn't any trig. Definitely learn geometry as it relates to triangles (using the Pythagorean Theorem, finding the area, knowing the sum of the angles), but don't bother learning trig topics like sine/cosine/etc.

Seeking, I agree with you that portions of the GRE are harder/less relevant, depending on your major. However, I'm not sure if your solution is really all that reasonable. For example, consider the contents of an advanced quant GRE for STEM majors. What, exactly, would be on such a test? Just because STEM majors are quant-heavy doesn't mean they all use the same types of skills; a math or computer science major may know a lot about graph theory, for example, but those might be completely irrelevant to other STEM fields. Even within the same field, people's quant backgrounds can be vastly different. Someone who specializes in computer graphics may know a lot about linear algebra, while someone else doing cryptography may primarily have a background in number theory. My point is, it's easy to talk about a GRE that tests "advanced quant topics", but the truth is that there are so many things that fall under that umbrella that there would be the exact same problem with some people suffering because their specific STEM discipline does not cover all of the topics. The current GRE avoids this problem by only testing things that people are assumed to have known when they started college; it doesn't expect anyone to have taken any quant-heavy classes post-high school, and in fact, I think the only college-level math course that would possibly be relevant to the GRE is stats, and even then it's pretty basic. Besides, we already have subject GREs to test more discipline-specific knowledge, and even those are frequently considered optional by grad schools, so I don't think attempting to specialize the general test is going to help much.

No idea. Seems a little early based on previous years' data, but only by a week or so.

One potential drawback I can imagine is that they might decide to look at only two of your recommendations, and by chance the one they don't consider may be your strongest. However, that seems super unlikely. Besides, you probably wouldn't have asked for those recs if you didn't think they were all going to be strong, right? Anyway, don't worry about it! Having one too many recommendations would be a really silly reason to reject someone.

True! Two years ago, I had a term where I did really, really poorly in school due to various mental health issues. I only passed one class, and that was with the lowest possible passing grade. That class was in my major, so I thought for sure I'd messed everything up. I talked to the professor about why my grades were so poor and he was very understanding, but it was the first class I ever had with him so I wouldn't blame him if he wound up thinking I was a horrible student or just didn't care. Flash forward to last semester, I went to go ask him to write me a recommendation for grad school. I'd taken two more classes with him and he was the advisor for my senior project so he'd seen how much better I was doing (hence why I felt justified asking for the rec), but I was still nervous that my poor grade in my first class with him would be a deal breaker. I would totally understand if he saw that little episode as evidence that I wasn't cut out for the rigors of grad school. Also, note that at the time, I was planning on only going for a masters. That one bad semester had killed my confidence so I was convinced that a PhD was way out of my league, and even a masters would be a miracle. Anyway, instead of saying no to my recommendation, he started asking me all sorts of questions about why I wanted to go to grad school. He didn't understand why I wasn't going for a PhD, though. He agreed to write me a recommendation, but he refused to speak to me any further until I could adequately defend my reasons for getting a masters only. He went on to say that he thought I sounded extremely passionate about research and that I would make a stronger PhD candidate than a masters candidate. Having a professor whose class I nearly failed show so much confidence in my chances at getting a PhD was... amazing. I've had a lot of support from friends and family - whether it's the well-intentioned but misguided "you'll get in everywhere, you're smart!" or the more honest "you did the best you could, now all you can do is wait and see" - but that one professor's encouragement has been my main motivation in this application season.

Yes! I have one more application to submit, and I've yet to hear back from anywhere (it's still a little too early). I'm going crazy waiting, though. Doesn't help that CS people seem to be underrepresented (or at least not very vocal) on this forum; I was starting to think I was the only one!